Transformation of Fujairah’s National Park Expects More Volunteers

The cleaning has begun to transform Wadi Wurayah return to its natural condition. Scribbles have been brushed and cleaned. Garbage and rubbish have been removed as well.

This will take much more to transform it into what Fujairah envisions it to become – the U.A.E.’s first guest-friendly national park, equipped international standards.

According to the Wadi Wurayah National Park conservation and management head, a national park must need a working ecosystem that is valued and preserved.

Park management has now begun preparing rangers and arranging evaluation studies to examine proposals for leisure amenities, camp areas, and eco-lodges. They aim for low impact, enjoyable, pleasurable and educational. Another main goal of the trek was to train rangers in planning field routes and meeting the challenges of each other.

Fujairah Municipality director-general stated his hopes and expectations of volunteers from different parts of the Middle East working with the national park program would support to enhance the Fujairah’s profile and endorse tourism.

Park officials completed a 2 day operation to arrange and keep camera traps round the park. This is a move to bringing back endangered species to the wadi. These devices will oversee the animals or any unlawful activities that could be occurring in the park. They had installed two new camera traps and changed the batteries of another six during the trek, 32 kilometers distance.

An animal that looks like a goat common only to the UAE and Oman mountains, the Arabian tahr is particularly important because it is regarded as endangered, the Int’l. Union for Conservation of Nature said.

The organization developing the park expect to plot for the farm in the vicinity, associate with residents and attempt to be aware of whether there are pouching happenings to be able to propose a park patrol system. He stated also that it is about public awareness, monitoring and trying to change mentality according to the park’s leader and preservation consultant for the Emirates Wildlife Society.

In 2006, the Wadi Wurayah project started and was named a protected area in 2009. The environmental organization Ramsar named it one of five UAE sites on its List of Wetlands of International Importance in 2010. Wadi is the home for the hard to find Arabian toad and an unusual orchid, the sole one in the country, in addition to the twenty two of the thirty-four dragonfly species discovered in the UAE.

The park project is sponsored by the Fujairah government and HSBC Middle East